Duke lacrosse: The hits just keep coming

It is a measure of how things have changed in the last six months that the News and Observer's Ruth Sheehan is now out of patience with DA Mike Nifong:

To most of us, the Duke lacrosse case is such a disaster that Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong, up for re-election, should be preparing for a trouncing.

Robert KC Johnson's blog remains essential reading. He has the best on-going analysis of the many parts of this miscarriage of justice.

Johnson's most recent post discusses the most shocking revelation so far: DA Nifong's admission that the case is going forward because Durham needs a political show trial for closure and healing.

Some weeks ago William Anderson suggested that the Duke hoax was a new Reichstag fire. At the time, i thought his analogy was over the top. Now, though, the DA has confirmed that the case is exactly that.

All the more reason for Duke president Brodhead to speak out.

Highly recommended

Forget the Black Dahlia, Wonderland is the LA true crime movie to see.

Nancy Grace: Another batch of shameless lies

Lauren Ritchie of the Orlando Sentinel has the sad details.

Grace's search for Trenton is about ratings

Grace's rantings are stale. So rev up the Trenton ratings machine.

The overblown, error-filled announcement of her arrival is typical of the "it's-all-about-me" way that Grace pathetically clings to the only story that has given her a recent ratings bump.

It's sickening to watch her play on emotions in a real-life tragedy to increase her dwindling viewing audience.

Read the article and then read Grace's "response" on her Friday show here.

Note especially how Grace continues to twist the facts (blaming Ritchie for the errors that NG's PR person made in the email.) Beyond that, however, the rambling response-- incoherent, bathetic, belligerent-- is an embarrassment to any news professional. It sounds like the rantings of a drunk in a bar.

It is no longer surprising when Grace is caught distorting the truth. Such revelations have become as predictable as the full moon. The really important question is why she still has a job at CNN. How can that network remain the Most Trusted Name in News when it gives an anchor chair to someone who is so uninterested in getting the facts right or thinking logically.

UPDATE: Lauren Ritchie prints some of the email she recieved after her column.

On deserving to lose

Michelle Malkin on the Webb/Allen race in Virginia

Political strategists in the belt are exulting that "Webb is toast" as a result of this Drudge/Allen bomb. But if this what Republican Senate candidates need to do to win elections, I don't think any of us should be cheering.

I think the recent attacks on Webb's novels are pathetic. Even worse is listening to Republicans justify it. Does anyone remember the outrage at the LA Times when they dredged up accusation against Schwarzenegger at the last minute?

At least the LA Times was reporting stuff that may or may not have happened. Allen is using material from a novel. A freaking novel!

Even worse, in my mind, is their attempt to attack Webb on his stand on women in the military. During the Clinton years, conservatives were very concerned about the attacks on military culture that followed in the wake of Tailhook. Webb was one of the stalwart in that fight and one of the few national figures outside of the uniformed services who stood up and spoke out against the witch hunt and the Great Military Re-education.

So now we see Republicans trying to attack him on the issue. Which means that they (implicitly) endorse the agenda of NOW and Hillary.

What is the point of winning an election if you have to abandon all your important positions to do so?

Wrongful Conviction

Here's an old but timely Columbia Journalism review article on wrongful convictions.

Three Books and Ten Lessons for Journalists

The author offers the pious hope that his ten lessons will "encourage realistic investigations into possibly wrongful convictions, and perhaps help prevent wrongful convictions." But his earnest wish is not match for the customs of the journalistic guild and news outlets thirst for ratings and readership. The Nancy Graces of the world still taint jury pools in sensational cases. Crime reporters still protect useful sources and, consequently, enable bad prosecutions.

It is a shame that no one at the News and Observer read this piece. DA Mike Nifong seems determined to go a perfect 10 out of 10 on the wrongful conviction checklist provided in the article. In the Duke lacrosse case we see a miscarriage of justice played out in real time. Except for a few hardy souls like Stuart Taylor, the MSM has played their assigned role of cheerleader and enabler.

Atticus Finch doesn't work here

John Grisham's new book is a terrific read and an important work. It is non-fiction and tells the story of two wrongly convicted men. I hope that Grisham's popularity will bring much needed attention to this issue.

We live in a media world that encourages these type of mistakes. If the police arrest no one, they will be excoriated for days, weeks, even years if the case is high profile. (See Natalie Holloway, Jon Benet Ramsey, etc.) But if they charge and convict the wrong man, his exoneration is a one day local story.

At times, media coverage of criminal matters seems like a reversion to our primitive history. Watching Nancy Grace or Greta van Sustren brings to mind images from the Roman Coliseum. The goal isn't truth or justice, it is closure. Closure demands that someone must pay for the crime. Someone can easily become anyone, guilty or not.

I suspect that this is why the tabloid media continues to bash Aruba, but has lost interest in Chandra Levy. Both crimes are unsolved, but the DC police get a pass. Levy's murder, though, did cost Gary Condit his seat in Congress. Someone paid. That he was innocent of her murder is of little concern.

David Klinhoffer looks at Michael Savage

Savaged

There is much about him that would suggest, not an ideologue at all, but simply a performer. Then again, sometimes you get the feeling that a refugee from Air America (the failed experiment in liberal talk radio) has been writing scripts for him based on a lefty’s cartoon mental picture of a ranting right-wing caveman.

See also:

The Demented World of Michael Savage

Michael Savage: agent provocateur?

Presswatch

Two good columns by Jack Shafer

Newsbooks:The triumph of a journalism genre

The scoops found in the newsbooks indicate that the competitive pressure of the daily deadline buries as much potential news as it unearths. David Corn tells me that sources on Capitol Hill often won't disclose inside information about what's happening todaywhich every reporter is asking them aboutbut these same sources will be more forthcoming about last week's events, which are no longer the hot subject of the moment. By standing outside of today's news cycle, newsbook authors can recognize patterns and make connections that escape beat reporters filing four or five pieces a week.

Maybe I’m missing something but the same argument can be made in defense of the best bloggers. They add context and offer analysis that is often missing from stories written on deadline.

Having Climbed Out Onto a Limb That Cracks …How should a newspaper crawl back?

So, why are newspapers so hesitant to acknowledge their flawed work? Among other things, no journalist ever got a raise for saying, "I got it wrong." The whole incentive structure encourages journalists to deny or otherwise obfuscate the mistakes and miscues they and their publications commit.

I think there are three forces at work here. The first derives from David Warsh’s concept of “explanation space”:

the lofty region where short-term causal explanations of events are forged.

This is where journalists compete with others in the guild. Admitting errors undercuts their competitive position.

The second comes from the hold that sources have over reporters. Warsh again:

What is important to understand is that beneath the glitz, newspapers actually operate as favor banks, to use novelist Tom Wolfe’s phrase from Bonfire of the Vanities. That is to say, newspapers are forever paying favors forward, in expectation of reciprocal acts of kindness from players yet unknown, accepting deposits of information and emphasis, making grants of credit and blame.

Newspapers reward their culture heroes and presidential favorites, penalize those with whom they disagree, further the activities of which they approve and ignore those which they do not, hoping all the while that the intricate web of transactions actually is in the black over time. No accountant could ever hope to make sense of it. That’s what they pay publishers and editors to do.

When a story goes wrong, it is often because reporters relied on the wrong sources. Revising the story means challenging those sources or portraying them in a bad light. This is hard because the reporter may still want those sources in the future.

Newsweek’s Susannah Meadow copped to half this charge in a recent media panel on the Duke lacrosse case.

Later, in response to a question about why the media seemed to assume the players were guilty, Meadows made this comment: “You had a public official [Nifong] who said, ‘I am sure!’, and say it to your face. We expect our public officials to know what they’re talking about.”

As noted before, crime reporters need the DA’s office to do their stories. Hence, they grant prosecutors much more credibility than most other officials. Can you imagine Evan Thomas quietly accepting a Rumsfeld pronouncement and then explaining it away by saying “we expect our our public officials to know what they are talking about”?

One last factor is the issue of worldview and explanation space. Important stories are written and published as part of a grand narrative. Journalists remain convinced that the big story is true even if some of the details are wrong. (Dan Rather, “fake but accurate”.) So why correct “trivia” at the risk of obscuring “the big picture”? This tendency has also been on ample display during the Duke lacrosse case.

Dots?

I was struck by a point made by Andrew McCarthy in his article on Lynne Stewart and her apologists:

According to Preston’s article, Harris has told the judge that the terrorism counts against Ms. Stewart were “unwarranted overkill.” Harris reportedly elaborated that Stewart “didn’t have a clue that the stick she was poking in the government’s eye was going to have consequences beyond her imagination.”

I was curious to know more about this Clinton appointee who rallied to the defense of a terror-supporter. A little googling turned up this old Robert Novak column which is especially interesting:

[Fran] Townsend moved to the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan -- notoriously liberal-laden amid a Republican administration. Townsend's boss and patron there was Jo Ann Harris, whose orientation was liberal Democratic.

When Attorney General Reno in 1993 summoned Harris to Washington as assistant attorney general running the Criminal Division, Harris immediately brought Townsend along as her aide. Townsend was promoted to oversee international law enforcement and then became counsel to the attorney general for terrorism and head of the Office of Intelligence Policy and Review (OIPR) -- a political Reno appointment for a supposed career slot.

See also here and here.

Why Jason Whitlock is the best

His latest AOL column gets to the heart of the matter on Miami (FLA)'s problems, the real reason Howard Cosell's popularity, and the legend of Edgerrin ("Jesse") James.
I've never been a big fan of James. IMO, he was given a pass at Indy while Manning was made the scapegoat for all the post-season failures. Hundreds of columns have been written about Manning's "inability to win the big game" despite "all his offensive weapons."

Without James, the Colts are 5-0. Without Manning, James averaged less than two yards a carry against the Bears and the Cardinals are 1-5. Maybe Manning's weapons weren't all that great. Maybe, just maybe, James racked up big numbers because teams worried more about Archie's boy than they did "the Edge."

One thing is clear to anyone who watched last year's playoffs. The Colts would have beaten the Steelers if James had not been stopped short of the goal line by Larry Foote in the first half. That failure was all James.

9/11 was a long time ago

The Coast Guard wants to train with machine guns in the Great Lakes. The New York Times finds plenty of people who are opposed to the idea.

We live in strange times. We demand that the government connect every dot and protect us against every contingency. Then, we nitpick every step the government takes to meet these expansive demands.

Andrew McCarthy offers another example: the muted reaction to Lynne Stewart's connivance with terrorists.

Cable news: get it fast, get it wrong

Cable news too fast, not final

The cable news networks, in the hyperdrive of a huge news story, or because of dogfight competition against others with the same technology, air stuff they have not properly checked out. Speed kills... their credibility.

Last year, management theorist Shoshana Zuboff wrote an interesting column for Fast Company. In it she noted that corporations were cutting costs by outsourcing work to their customers.

It seems to me that this is part of the business model cable news has adopted.

In the past, reporters and producers would conduct interviews, verify information and add context, write and edit the story, and then present the audience with a two-minute report. Cable, however, just fills air time with raw interviews. The audience has to do the work of verifying and assessing the information.

It is cost-effective because it is so cheap.

What i don't understand is why the respectable media plays along. Why do real reporters go on shows like "Nancy Grace" and provide grist for the mill? Many of these pseudo-newscasts would wither on the vine if they did not have real reporters doing their work for them.

Yes, indeed, a heartland World Series

No Yankees, no Mets, no Red Sox. Let the whining begin at ESPN.

Citizenship and education

Jeffrey Hart offers a definition given by his old professor Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy:

He also said that the goal of education is the citizen. He defined the 'citizen' in a radical and original way arising out of his own twentieth-century experience. He said that a citizen is a person who, if need be, can re-create his civilization.

Of course, if this is true, then we are doomed. Our institutions of higher learning are in the hands of people who loathe this civilization and are eager to remake it into something else.

When you win 45-7,

You get featured in TMQ:

Sweet Play of the Week: Pittsburgh leading 7-0, the Steelers had a first-and-10 on the Chiefs' 47. Pittsburgh ran a sweet-looking play in which Ben Roethlisberger faked the hitch pass right, then faked a handoff up the middle, then threw deep to the unguarded Nate Washington on the skinny post -- touchdown, and the walkover was on. Not only did Kansas City defensive back Greg Wesley let Washington go deep, not even attempting to cover him; not only was Wesley making the high school mistake of "looking into the backfield" trying to guess the play rather than guarding his man; check the tape of what happened once Wesley turned and realized Washington was behind him. Wesley merely stood there and watched the touchdown, jogging a little in the general direction after it was too late. This is the sort of defensive esprit de corps that would later in the game result in Kansas City taking over the mantle of TMQ's Single Worst Play of the Season So Far (see below).

Actually, I think this deserves to be the sweet and sour play of the week. A Chiefs DB had a chance to tackle nate Washington, but instead went for the big hit so beloved by highlight shows. The Pride of Tiffin College took the hit, bounced off, and went into the end zone. Had the DB wrapped up, the Steelers would have had first and ten in the red zone leading 7-0.

Big Ben has a history of costly interceptions down close. He threw pick-sixes to both the Jets and the Patriots in the 2004 playoffs. We squeaked by the Jets, but the interception against the Patriots was a back breaker. (It made the score 24-7 at the half.)

In SuperBowl XL, it was his interception at the goal line that let the Seahawks score their only touchdown. It kept the game close when it might have become a rout. (Blitzburgh loves a 21-3 third quarter lead).

This season the Steelers were leading the Bengals 7-0 and were driving (sound familiar?) Ben threw an interception in the end zone and left the door unlocked for the Bengal’s comeback.

All of this illustrates why the Chiefs’ play was inexcusable. Anything can happen in the red zone. Even if the Chiefs don’t get an interception and 95 yard return, they may have recovered a fumble or blocked a field goal. Even a successful field goal would have made the score only 10-0 and would have let the Chiefs defense keep a little of their confidence.

So it was a sweet play, a sour play, and a hidden play (unplay?). I sometimes wonder if this isn’t one of those areas where hustling teams (cough, Patriots, cough) reap their reward. They don’t give up cheap touchdowns and so have a chance to force the red zone turnover in the first place. Or they hold their opponent to a field goal. Over the course of a season that can translate into 30 or 40 unscored points and one or two extra victories.

Foley and "the List"

When this kind of thing involved liberals and Stalinists, we called it blacklisting and now consider it an abomination.

From World Magazine (a newsweekly aimed at evangelicals):

Around 8 p.m. on Oct. 4, a Democratic Party henchman clicked "send" on an e-mail that sent a list to Focus on the Family claiming to out as homosexuals 19 high-level Republican staffers on Capitol Hill. The List included the names of nine chiefs of staff for Republican congressmen. According to many homosexual groups, efforts by some gay-rights activists to "out" closeted gays represents salacious and vicious gossip with the intent to destroy the careers of political staffers.

Media stories indicate conservative Christians initially passed around The List, but Focus received the list from a Yahoo! e-mail account registered to the Health & Policy Research Foundation, a small California AIDS awareness charity run by former Democratic National Committee operative Rick Reidy.

Duke lacrosse

The "60 Minutes" segments on the case were well done and were absolutely devastating to Nifong.

Robert KC Johnson has been on the story for months and this post provides an exhaustive summary of the lies and missteps.

Jason Whitlock calls for the dismissal of the charges.

As i watched the "60 Minutes" piece, i was reminded again of the power of real journalism. Ed Bradley laid out the facts and told a story. This case has been a staple of the cable tabloid shows since the DNA dragnet back in March. Unfortunately those shows subscribe to the "Crossfire" model of journalism where the goal is screaming debate, not fact-finding. Tucker Carlson needs Georgia Goslee or Wendy Murphy. Ed Bradley did not. We were all better for their non-appearance.

Double standard?

After this story broke, Duke suspended the team for the remainder of the lacrosse season. The ostensible reason was the repeated bad behavior of the team with the party being the straw that broke the camels back. That seemed harsh and a little disingenuous: Duke maintained that it was the party, not the rape allegations that triggered the action. Most sportswriters accepted the action as understandable and just.

Would it be fair, then, to suspend the University of Miami (FLA) football team for the remainder of the season? The brawl/gang fight has been caught on tape. There is no doubt about what happened on the field on Saturday. Nor can anyone doubt that players at the U have had a pattern of bad behavior.

Steelers blogging

This Ed Bouchette column is outstanding.

As bad as things might seem in Steeler Nation, do not -- repeat, do not -- pull the quarterback.

i also like that he is willing to acknowledge that some of the blame for Kordell Stewart's problems should go to the coaching staff. Slash became a whipping boy among Steelers's fan, but i think it was largely undeserved. He got us to the AFC Championship game twice. His performance in the 2001 game against the Patriots was more than good enough to win. I can think of five or six reasons we lost that have nothing to do with Stewart.

Duke lacrosse

An outstanding column by William Anderson.

Duke and the Death of Academe

Universities to some extent have prided themselves on being "other-worldly," in that they have seen themselves as places of refuge from the real world. Unfortunately, instead of being refuges from the bad aspects of life, they have become a nightmare of political correctness, in which professors have come to view their campuses as huge re-education camps.

Nancy Grace: Belle of the Freakers Ball

That's what Stephen King call her in his Entertainment Weekly column. Yeah, she's too creepy and nasty for the King of Horror.

Oh, by the way. I wonder who he was quoting here?

One politics-and-business blog calls this ''the dead mother bounce.''

Any ideas?